A RECENT study conducted by leading veterinary surgeon Dr Sue Dyson confirmed that if veterinary surgeons are trained to use a Ridden-Horse-Ethogram they are better to recognise pain-related behaviour in horses, which may reflect lameness or back or sacroiliac pain.

Dyson is Head of Clinical Orthopaedics at the Centre for Equine Studies at the Animal Health Trust in Newmarket. In the study she compared the real-time application of the Ridden-Horse-Ethogram with analysis of video recordings of the horses by a trained assessor and determined whether veterinarians, after preliminary training, could apply the ethogram in real time in a consistent way and in agreement with an experienced assessor.